Day 8 - Off the Compound

It's amazing how fast one goes through tires here. Everywhere you drive, you will find little canopies or shops on the side of the road doing tire repair and replacement. The roads are ridden with cracks, pot holes, craters, and jagged rocks and there are no crews to clean up boards, nails, and other debris. Since I've been here, our fleet vehicles have gone through six tires. On Tuesday I drove up the road in Titanyen to the marketplace to have a new tire mounted on a rim for one of our Dodge pickups. It only cost us $6 US dollars, but took almost 45 minutes to complete. These shops don't have tire mounting machines, computerized balancers, or power tools, and I watched this older gentleman mount a tire with just two curved pieces of metal and his foot. He then inserted an old, dirty tire tube between the rim and tire and pumped it up with a tiny rusty air compressor until the bead seated. He then craftily removed the tube and aired up the tire. When you look deeper - past the first observations, you realize the resourcefulness of the Haitian people; they don't have much, but they use what they have to its maximum efficiency.

Later on that day after doing some computer work on base, I was able to help out at a food distribution at the Mission of Hope compound in Titanyen where we delivered 5 truckloads of rice (which is about 70 metric tons). This distribution was less hostile than the ones in Cité Soliel (currently, no other organization besides Samaritan's Purse will go into Cité Soliel). Most of the people were extremely grateful and many were smiling and we played Christian Creole music in the background. After that was over, I came back to the compound and drove a 4-wheeler down to a 30'x5' pit full of trash and lit it on fire, which is always fun.

I spent the entire day Wednesday with Kyle driving around the city. We had to purchase two new tires from one shop, a box of supplies from another, and then pick up a gentleman at the airport to bring back to the base. In Haiti, that takes up your entire day; everything is so slow down here. Plus, we had two nationals with us for translating and navigating and I'm pretty sure they took us the scenic route to avoid going back to work on the compound. Needless to say, Wednesday was a little frustrating.

Today was much better, though. I started off the day early helping R.L. load and transport building materials and tools to one of our shelter building sites. R.L. drove a flatbed, and I had a Dodge pickup and trailer. The fun part was when my trailer came unhitched driving down the road. Fortunately I wasn't even doing 30mph, so it didn't do any damage when it slammed into the back of the pickup when I slowed down. R.L. was too far ahead to see what had happened, so I had to get out and manually pick up the trailer and mount it back on the hitch - this time secured! When we got to the site, there were already about 20 - 30 Haitian men waiting on us to continue the building. As soon as we dropped the trailer from the pickup and the guard rails on the flatbed, they began grabbing tools and supplies and started working. I have some pics of the shelter villages we've been constructing.

As soon as I got back from that at 8am, I took a helicopter over to one of our sub-bases in a city called Grand Goave to do some computer work for them. It's a 3.5 hour drive (or a 17 minute helicopter ride) from our main base in Titanyen. As we made the trip, we passed over the city of Léogâne, which was at the epicenter of the earthquake. I never saw such complete destruction; 90% of the buildings in Léogâne are destoyed - no exaggeration. From the sky, all you see is rubble, tents, and makeshift shelters. The city of Grand Goave is completely different from Titanyen. Titanyen is desert-like with dust and dry heat; Grand Goave is very tropical with lush vegetation, vibrant green colors, and extreme humidity (and mosquitoes like mad). It's amazing how just 17 minutes separates two distinct climates. I spent the entire workday there doing pretty basic computer work and unloading rice for a food distribution. The best part about my stay at the Grand Goave compound: they have toilets - AND they flush! After landing back at the main base, I got barraged with several computer and cell phone issues, ate some dinner and then took some Creole lessons. It's been a good day, but a long day, and on that note - goodnight!